The site, www.thatisnotfunny.ca, was started by Michael Diamond, Conservative campaign strategist and principal at Upstream Strategy Group. It describes CBC Comedy as a not-terribly-funny and “lame” version of the popular satire site The Onion. It urges readers to write to their members of Parliament, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and CBC president Hubert Lacroix to call for the site to lose its public funding.

“Canada already has a lame version of The Onion, it is called The Beaverton, so why on earth do taxpayers need to fund a less funny version in CBC ‘Comedy’?” states the website.

The site argues CBC Comedy’s jokes tend to fall flat. Diamond cites as an example a segment about U.S. Senator John McCain, who recently was diagnosed with brain cancer after having surgery to remove a blood clot. CBC Comedy produced a segment titled, “John McCain back to ‘his old self’ after surgery, unfortunately.” The segment has since been removed.

Has brain cancer, near death. Hilarious!
McCain back to ‘his old self’ after surgery, unfortunately | CBC Comedy https://t.co/CmbLN5kUdJ

Diamond, who was Leitch’s spokesperson during her failed bid to win the Tory leadership, told iPolitics in an email that he didn’t pay attention to CBC Comedy until this winter when he noticed Twitter users complaining about the poor quality of the segments.

“I couldn’t help but agree, it is just not funny,” wrote Diamond.

“On Wednesday night I noticed others tweeting about their poorly-timed piece (since removed) on Senator McCain. Senator McCain is a personal hero of mine – he was my preferred candidate in 2000 when he ran for the GOP nomination, and in 2008 I was blessed to attend the Republican Convention, and see him deliver his acceptance speech in person.”

Diamond said the website campaign is not about the CBC itself; it’s about “taxpayer dollars” being wasted on “bad jokes.”

Diamond said his goal is to build grassroots support which will force CBC to respond by disbanding “this giant and unfunny waste.”

The website went live Friday afternoon, said Diamond, and so far, with minimal effort online, over 150 emails have been sent to MPs, Joly, Scheer and to Lacroix.

CBC’s response shows that the public broadcaster is working at remedying the fallout from the segment on McCain. An automated response is triggered by filling out the form on Diamond’s website.

Senior director of Comedy, Michelle Daly, wrote, “I understand you have reached out to Hubert Lacroix, President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada and your member of Parliament regarding a piece from CBC Comedy about US Senator John McCain.”

“In my role as the Head of Comedy for CBC, I wanted to respond on CBC’s behalf. Let me start by saying I appreciate the time you have taken to share your concerns and please know, it is never our intention to offend any individual or group. We also recognize that our viewers have different standards by which they judge our satirical content.”

Daly wrote that at the time the piece about McCain was posted, news outlets had reported that McCain was recovering well from surgery however, “news of Senator McCain’s medical condition changed the following day.”

“As soon as we were aware of the new diagnosis we removed the post, judging that it was no longer in good taste. It is increasingly difficult to scrub metadata from the internet once a post is removed, but we have taken all possible action to rectify the situation,” wrote Daly.